The cloud-native ecosystem is home to a massive number of Kubernetes-focused open source projects, and that presents a paradox of choice.

The expanse of the open source community shows how healthy and impactful Kubernetes has been, but it also brings about one of the ecosystem's largest challenges, Stu Miniman, Red Hat's director of cloud platform market insights, told SDxCentral.

"No single vendor offers a full solution. At the end of the day, companies need to understand what gaps they need to fill and whether or not they have the bandwidth or expertise to fill them," Miniman explained. This is where the benefits of partners and advisors are realized, "especially in this cloud-native, container-centric world where open source is the de facto innovation engine."

Miniman says companies considering adopting open source projects should ask themselves the following questions:

• What does the project do, and how does that align with the problem we are trying to solve?
• What type of persona is the project geared toward?
• Who is contributing to the project?
• Are there competitors to the project?
• Is the project associated with other projects? If so, are those projects in use at our organization?
• What level and quality of engagement does the community exhibit?

Community engagement analysis is "an interesting one to manage," Miniman said. If a company uses an open source project and is also a contributor, it's probably more mature and will reflect an understanding of the project's nuances.

GitHub stars or contributors to a project can be a good indication of its overall health, but long term project viability is another area enterprises looking to fill a key piece of their overall stack should consider. "Who’s driving the roadmap and what does the project governance look like?" Miniman said.

One of the simplest strategies he suggests is talking to others to learn about what projects they're using and what they tried before finding the right one.

"Everything from social media communities like Reddit to reports from industry analysts can and should be used when searching for projects to meet a specific need," Miniman said.

Kubernetes' modularity also opens up multiple valid options users can choose from that could adequately meet their needs. In building a service management architecture, for example, it can be beneficial to pick a few similar projects that seemingly overlap, he explained.

Fifteen years ago, tech companies were working individually to solve collective challenges. But the prevailing culture is built on collaborating with peers, learning from others in the space, and seeking to understand industry trends and challenges on a broader scale, Miniman said.

And this illustrates one of the open source ecosystem's greatest strengths — its community focus and collaborative nature.

"Some of the most widely-used open source projects today, Kubernetes included, started as internal efforts by companies that were trying to solve their own problems but recognized the potential that community-powered innovation could bring to the industry as a whole," he explained.

This marks a new level of maturity for Kubernetes. "People don't have to go it alone — they can learn from peers, lean on resources like Kube by Example, understand certain activities, see where to get started, and get help along the way," Miniman said.